


Guten Tag

by voices_in_my_head



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 21:25:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voices_in_my_head/pseuds/voices_in_my_head
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or, "5 people who couldn't handle there still being a TonyandPepper and 1 who could."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guten Tag

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: "5+1, Tony and Pepper break up, New SOs can't handle their awesome broship".

**1) Matt**

Pepper is aware that she is what most men would call beautiful. She’s not smug about it, but she feels good about it, especially when she sees the type of men that she’s sure would never have liked her when she was in high school and had braces and a few pimples too many. That also means that she doesn’t trust those men that much. If the first thing they tell her is that she’s beautiful she probably won’t go on a date with them. She’s aware she looks good in high heels; she doesn’t need some strange man with a questionable past to tell her that.

That said, Matt is a surprise. The first thing he tells her is, “are you Virginia Potts?”

She says yes, already bracing herself for the commentary about how the only reason she got to be CFO of Stark Industries is because she fucked the boss.

Instead the man, with styled black hair, glasses a little too hipster for her taste and a very nice and expensive suit, does a double take. “Wow, I can’t believe I’m actually meeting you. Your presentation about renewable energies was just fantastic.”

Pepper’s surprised, she’ll admit. It’s the first time anyone, especially a man, has told her they liked her presentation on anything. Most people aren’t aware that as Tony’s assistant she has to do more than clean out the trash. She does actual work and for that, Tony had given her a small post in the last Stark Expo.

There had been less than a hundred people watching her talk and she had never thought one of them would remember her.

“Thank you. I’m glad you liked it,” she smiles. “Would you like to sit?”

“Yes,” he says, already sitting down. He blushes and she doesn’t care about the hipsters glasses anymore. “Sorry, it’s just a real big pleasure.”

For the rest of the hour that they sit in the café she keeps expecting him to finally ask her about Tony Stark or, more recently, about Iron Man. But Matt never does. He talks about new forms of energy for the planet, asking her questions, listening attentively and giving his own suggestions. She likes how he doesn’t talk to her like he’s stupid, like most of the men on the board of Stark Industries like to do, even though they know more than most that she’s been the one behind Tony all these years.

Tony may have the brains, but she’s the one that explains it all and that gets the board’s approval.

When they finally part ways they’ve already settled a second date and Pepper feels happy with getting back on the metaphorical horse date with Matt, the biological engineer.

.

Three months later and she’s carrying a small box out of Matt’s apartment. Pepper didn’t exactly see him as the man she would one day marry, maybe even have children with, but she liked him and it hurt that he had been jealous of her relationship with Tony.

He just hadn’t been capable of accepting that even though they broke up, and not because she had asked him the dangerous question of “me or the suits” the tabloids kept bringing up, they were still friends. Probably more than that. Tony had, after all, given her control of his company.

Matt had even had the nerve to ask her if she wouldn’t be happier elsewhere. He offered her a job as his secretary!

She should have known better than to date a man with hipster glasses.

**2) Jim**

Pepper doesn’t meet James, likes to be called Jim, in the best circumstances. He’s one of the nurses in the hospital Tony’s driven to after a battle with the Avengers.

He’s trying to take his blood, which Tony being Tony, is being an annoying ass about it.

“For crying out loud, Tony, just let the man do his job,” she says, after making sure there are no broken bones.

“Pepper! My beautiful Pepper! What brings you to my humble hospital room?”

“I assure you, Mr. Stark, nothing with you in it, is humble,” she retorts and catches the smile the nurse is trying to keep off his face. “Now, please be nice, and let,” she turns on him, “what’s your name?”

“Oh, Jim. Jim Roberts.”

“Jim take out your blood. If you do that I’ll even bring you a hamburger.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Miss Potts.”

“I try,” she says and when Jim has his head down, all his attention on his patient’s arm, Tony sends a look that clearly states he knows a manoeuvre to find someone’s name when he sees one.

“I learned from the best,” she mouths and is pretty sure neither her nor Tony know if she means it as a compliment or not.

.

Pepper and Jim (never PepperandJim) last two months. Contrary to Matt they don’t break up because he can’t deal with Tony, but more precisely because he can’t deal with Pepper dealing with Tony.

He doesn’t understand how she can always be there for him whenever he gets hurt, even though it’s no longer her “job” and it clearly hurts her.

In a way, it’s nice that Jim worries about her, but he doesn’t understand that there’s still a PepperandTony, and that it is never going to be over. Especially not because of something as stupid as no longer being romantically together.

A man that takes two tries to take someone’s blood shouldn’t be trusted, anyway.

**3) Lisa**

Pepper doesn’t date women very often. She considers herself bisexual but not 50/50. Over the years it has gotten more to the 10/90 balance, obviously more for the men. Sometimes she hates her brain for it, imagining dating a woman would be easier.

Dating Lisa reminds her that that is a lie.

They don’t last two weeks before Lisa starts with the conversation of, “aren’t you happy you dumped that asshole? I can’t even imagine how you stayed with him for so long. Were you having some identity crisis? Glad you finally found the right path.”

Lisa was, unfortunately, one of those lesbians that didn’t understand the concept of bisexuality. The only reason Pepper stayed a third week was because of the mind blowing sex. Yes, that was shallow of her, but so was Lisa talking about Tony and her relationship with him, without even knowing the genius.

Her rule of not dating men where the first thing out of their mouth when meeting her are “you’re beautiful” is now in vigour to women as well.

**4) David**

David is a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and she had promised herself that she would never date one of them but well, you can’t have a rule without a few exceptions.

They meet when she has gone to their headquarters to talk about Tony’s contract. Obviously the man has no need of more money, but that doesn’t mean the secret agency can treat him any way they want.

David is nice enough to lead her to Fury’s office.

When she gets home that night, she finds a paper with his name and number on her jacket. She doesn’t call him because he’s cute (which he is with his blond hair and blue eyes) but because he was able to do it without her feeling it. True, she’s not exactly a secret spy but her jacket only had inside pockets and it was buttoned at the time of her meeting.

.

David is nice, smart and funny. He listens to all of her problems and worries, gives suggestions, good ones at that, and since he isn’t allowed to tell her about most of his work, has come up with ingenious ways of inventing stories that tell her a lot of his day.

During those six months she’s happy with him. Really, really happy. That should have warned her.

Contrary to the rest of the people she has been dating for that last year, David doesn’t immediately question her relationship with Tony.

He’s the only one that accepts her simple answer of “we just weren’t meant to be” for the truth and doesn’t try to undiscovered hidden meanings.

In the end it’s not her relationship with Tony that finally makes them break up, but her relationship with Iron Man. David is a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and happy to be. He worked hard to get where he is today and he trusts them and their mission.

So, he isn’t exactly happy with the way Pepper is always defending Iron Man’s actions, but never David’s.

If she were looking into it from an outer point of view she would see his point. As it is they keep arguing and arguing until it gets too much. He’s the only one of the four people she has dated since Tony that she imagined a future with.

Oh well, she should have known better than to date a man that can touch her without her feeling it.

**5) Bryan**

Bryan is a dentist. Not her dentist, of course, just one she met through a mutual friend. It happens six months after her break-up with David, when one of her friends, Macy, told her it was time to meet someone knew and that she had “just the man for you, Pep. You’re going to be thanking me in the altar.”

Obviously Pepper hadn’t believed her, especially since this was not the first time Macy had introduced her to someone and given her a similar speech. Still, she was currently unattached and if it didn’t work out, she could at least say she had tried.

So, she went to the restaurant and met Bryan, a tall man with a beard.

Before Tony she used to hate men with any sort of facial hair. Now she finds it sort of cute.

That first night they talked about their jobs but mostly about their childhoods. She had never had a date like she had with him. After dinner he took her to the theatre and when he left her at home, only kissed her hand.

She had blushed like a fifteen year old.

So, Pepper had accepted a second date and then a third, and so forth. She kept finding more and more points to why she liked him and why maybe, just maybe, Macy hadn’t been wrong in her promise of a future thank you.

They had been talking about moving in together when the inevitable happened. He started questioning about her relationship with Tony.

In this, he was more like Lisa than Matt or David. He talked as if he was superior to the other man, and not just about Tony, but about all of the exes she had told him about. He even told homophobic jokes!

She didn’t understand how she could have been so blinded by his chivalrous ways.

With the others they had discussed the break-up in a civil way. With Bryan, Pepper had gotten up from dinner, after he had told one too many jokes about her needing a real man to set her straight and laughing like a manic at his own pun, and left. She had felt like saying a lot of things, but in the end she only said, “I’m just sorry I lost so much of my life with you.”

She didn’t even care about the stuff she left in his apartment.

It was also the last time she went on a date that Macy set up.

**+1) Tony**

When Pepper and Tony had finally gotten together Pepper had felt like exploding from happiness. She had had a crush (she would not call it being in love) on the man for years. Not as long as she’d know him, but still some.

In the beginning it had seemed like the perfect deal. They had been co-workers for years (the line between employer and employee had blurred a long time ago), friends for almost as long and were finally taking their relationship to the next level.

Unfortunately she had never thought that maybe their relationship was not meant to go to that level.

They were incompatible, she quickly discovered. They weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend as much as they were friends with benefits.

It felt awkward sleeping against him and even the sex was… it was good in a physical way but it was like sleeping with a brother or something. They had done it less than two times before agreeing than no, that was just too awkward.

For a month they had tried the open relationship, where they slept with other people but not with each other. It wasn’t Pepper’s first open relationship and she had no problem with it. Except they started questioning that without the sex what was their current relationship different from the old one?

They had more meals together (or Tony felt more compelled to show up, more like it) but they both went to their separate homes at the end of it.

Their conversations hadn’t changed that much and the only kiss they shared was the hello and goodbye ones, which were barely pecks on the lips.

In the end they had ended the relationship which in the beginning she was afraid would destroy their friendship but two days later she was forced to make him go to sleep “because you have an important meeting in two hours, Tony!” and everything went back to normal.

.

When she left Bryan’s apartment she didn’t even think of going to her home. Instead she went to the Avenger’s Tower (she had, of course, followed Tony to New York).

“Never trust a man with facial hair,” is the first thing she says when she finds him working in his lab.

“You mean never trust a man with facial hair that isn’t Tony Stark,” he answers, not even looking up from what he’s doing.

“No, I meant exactly what I said,” she says, but she’s smiling and taking off her heels and Bryan who?

They chat for the best part of an hour about this and that, without Tony ever stopping his work and with Pepper checking and unchecking meetings.

In the end the only person that can understand how there can still be a TonyandPepper is Tony.

 


End file.
